Novan Leon:I feel like all these people vehemently decrying rampant sexism in videogames are just now waking up to realize that the industry is largely marketed towards the uninhibited, teen-to-college age male. It's like complaining that Playboy, Maxim or the latest spring break movie are sexist. Guess what? When the dominant demographic begin to ask for something more than scantly-clad women in their games, then that's what the industry will provide. As it stands, the product this demographic demands is one that enables them to act out their masculine fantasies. This whole thing just feels like much to-do about nothing.

The difference between Playboy and the game industry is that Playboy is just one company that represents the whole industry and is balanced out by the likes of Playgirl or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_women%27s_magazines. Gaming as a whole lacks anything regularly focused at women.

Also, I think it makes perfect sense that a guy playing as a girl character would feel awkward when their character begins kissing a male character. The entire purpose of these games is to immerse you in the experience, meaning that I, a straight male, am projecting myself onto the main character that I control. The moment my character, me, regardless of whether the character is male or female, begins to kiss a guy, I lose some of that immersion. That's not sexist, that's just a natural result of immersing myself in a character. (I hope that makes sense)

I don't have that issue myself but I respect that you do, so I think it fair that you should respect that other people share that same feeling when the roles get reversed, that a women may not like kissing another women in game.

For the record: I'm perfectly willing to play a female protagonist. I'll admit that in games where there are gender options, the female character is usually my second play-through rather than my first, but a game with only a female lead is nothing like a deal-breaker. I just want to see the options that are tailored to someone more like me first, if there's a choice and a significant difference.

I agree that it's utterly sad and ridiculous that "Remember Me" should be finding this issue to be a hurdle. If nothing else, the "generic sepia-toned dudebro hero" has led to many games that barely bother developing their generic characters at all; the presence of considered female characters is often a flag that a game may have actually put some thought into their script and storyline.

Moonlight Butterfly:This subject was brought up in the 'should Lara be gay' thread. My problem there was that my sexuality ie 'straight female' is ignored just as much as gay men and women but it seems people just want to skate over the top of that and ignore straight women because apparently we aren't a minority and the only good female protagonist in video games just has to be gay.

I hope that lady in Remember Me has a big sloppy snog with some Tom Hiddleston lookalike right up in in the camera.

I personally think that the problem isn't that lesbians have it worse or straight women have it worse, I think the problem is that there are such few female protagonists that both lesbians and straight women have to fight over the scant few that do exist and neither thinks they have enough (which is true! neither side, nor bisexual, asexual, pansexual, etc. women, have enough female protagonists to admire and play as!).

Just trying to clarify if you thought my position in the Lara thread was antagonistic or dismissive. I definitely agree that we should have more straight female protagonists with agency who actively enjoy a romance with a male character in front of the camera (fuck the haters), but I also don't think we should dismiss lesbians who want the same, because it's actually pretty hard for them to find examples of lesbian characters that aren't there solely for the enjoyment of the straight male audience (much like straight women, too).

Actually I think Bayonetta sold like shite, the only reason it is getting a sequel is because Nintendo is resurecting it for +1 exclusive that appeals to 'hardcore' gamers. And Metroid has a built in Nintendo fanboy base.

And who the hell is raiding Tom? Those bastards!

Bayonetta sold about 1.4million copywhich is not bad, it's not amazing, but it's not bad.

Ashoten:Especially when you are someone like me with thick gorilla hair that needs to shave twice a day just to maintain a clean look. I go through disposable razors like candy cause they cannot handle my mutant man hair.

I know that feel, bro.

Worst thing in the world when I'm shaving and then "oh fuck, the blade's fucking ragged again!"

My friend once turned to me and said "aw, I haven't shaved in a couple of days, it's getting a bit annoying."

Well, on RPG's, I'm guilty of always making a male protagonist, but that's always because I kinda project myself on them and I don't plan on suddendly changing to female characters and as for games with female characters, I'm all for it and I'd definitely wish the industry could make more games with female leads.

Yup, our ancestors should just had dealt with living in a pre-industrial society and having a life-expectancy of 35 years and being subject to the whims of autocratic despots, because changing society for the better and advancing as a civilization is baaaad.

You may want to quote whomever you are replying to so people actually know what your reply is in relation to. Otherwise it makes it somewhat difficult to understand who exactly you are disagreeing with.

Uuuh, the OP. Jim Sterling.

It's pretty standard in a forum thread that if you say "you" without a quote you are referring to the OP.

Surely you can see the relevance if you read what I posted and compare it to JS's video.

Mr.Tea:Well, just before I saw Jimquisition had been posted, I said this about the fact that a whopping 82% of Mass Effect playthroughs were Male Shep:

Me:God people are boring... Of course the vast majority played a Soldier Male Shep! They need to "identify" and shit!

Very seriously, from the bottom of my heart and with all due respect (none): Fuck anyone who somehow won't play female characters. Fuck them up the arse with a rake.

And I stand by it even more after this video.

Also, it's quite funny how the first few replies are all "Oh no! Not more sexism debate! Stop talking about it!"

Funnily enough, the one hour that I played of ME2 was done as a female character, and since then I can't help but naturally associate ME in general with Shepard being a woman with a shoulder-high haircut, even as all the ads had Shepard as that near-bald white guy. Funny how that works.

Yeah I totally agree that we both have it bad with representation. I'm just worried that straight women will get a bit forgotten about. It's slightly ridiculous that we are having this conversation at all. We should have good representation for everyone. I'm sure we can all agree that gay guys are the worst off :(.

I didn't really find anyone to be antagonistic in that thread. Which was nice.

You know why this is a non-issue? Largely because of what I call lib-trolls, those who use liberal issues to troll, and get attention and support from liberals for the simple sake of spreading chaos and getting attention. Dropping an "ist" or an "ism" pretty much gives one a personal army.

When you create a female character for a game, your typical, physically perfect "action hero" type, every bit the equal in idealism as a male hero, you invite criticism. Your lib-trolls run up and immediatly start saying it's sexist, or picking on elements of the game where the character is placed in jeopardy, and say beaten up, claiming that having anything bad to the character is a bunch of misogyny.

With a male character you don't have this kind of issue, you really have to stretch to make an issue of the guy, and usually it comes down to people QQing about how there aren't as many female characters rather than finding anything wrong with the so called "gun bro" in of itself.

Jim is correct as to the trends, but doesn't really get into WHY these trends exist, and how other arguements made, some by people who actually believe them, have contributed to the entire problem. Before we can have more female characters in games, the entire crowd that complains about things like the "Hitman Absolution" trailer, freaks out over the "Cyberpunk 2020" trailer, or cries about Lara Croft getting the crap beaten out of her, needs to be entirely silenced. Until that happens female characters will come with a ton of baggage, and it's something a game company does not want to deal with. Both in terms of more complaints about what happens to that character, but also in arguements that showing a physically ideal woman (the same as a guy with biceps bigger than his neck) is in some way sexist, or ironically that male gamers will feel like they are being insultingly pandered to the whole "oh look marketing thinks that we're all desperate nerds who will buy anything with a hot girl plastered on the front of it".

Like it or not, those championing so called "feminism" usually lead by a troll, have created the current monster and driven the industry increasingly away from it.

As far as romance and sex in video games goes, that's a touchy subject to begin with. To be honest when you get down to it there aren't really enough examples to point to a general trend, especially seeing as this is all fairly new to video games, and there is backlash over the very idea of sex in video games involving a very traditional/stereotypical relationship portrayal. Remember we are living in an era where Bethesda freaked out over fan made nudity/sex mods for Oblivion, Hot Coffee got attention from the federal goverment (and Hillary Clinton arguably wields more power than ever before, she spearheaded that one), and people freaked out over "Alien Sideboob" in Mass Effect. Homosexuals getting involved, a tiny minority of people, demanding massive representation as an entitlement hasn't helped matters either given that roughly 50% of the population in the US alone doesn't even believe they should be allowed to exist (at least not openly) which is why it's a major issue in politics, and why globally we see riots in France over pro-gay laws. When sex in video games comes up, this is close behind, when we haven't even gotten general acceptance of regular sex down (as this points out). Never mind issues like "The Old Republic" where gay romance was added in as requested and complaints STILL continue that it isn't enough gay because it isn't omnipresent through everyone's games.

To be honest there isn't a problem with the general view of female protaganists, I mean heck, huge numbers of guys who are perfectly straight create female characters in MMOs and such to play, which in of itself sparks internet debates and discussions from people who "don't get it" especially given the numbers... and things like "Second Life" have shown that a core of the gaming crowd will pretty much stomach, and even seek out, pretty much any kink you can think of, including (or perhaps especially) with women initiating it.

The issue is that gaming is becoming mainstream, sex has been an issue to begin with, and you really do need to see baby steps here when it comes to inclusion in non-pornographic games. We saw the same things with other media like movies. The first step is of course going to be to shut up, and stop tolerating, the lib-trolls and those who follow them. Do not pay attention to, or support those, making claims of an "ism" or an "ist" in an arguement when it comes to gaming. When someone makes a female protaganist or you see a girl get treated like a guy (brutalized, etc...) for dramatic effect in a game, do everything you can to shut down the critics. After all it's those critics and the noise they make that causes the industry to not want to go here. I mean heck, if we had pretty much done "Kane and Lynch" with a couple of scary sociopathic girls, just imagine the reactions to the torture scenes in the second game, instead of criticizing it for basically being crap (with the most glowing reviews calling it average) lib trolls would instead have everyone focusing on it for being sexist. If you have a problem with a girl being tortured or whatever, but don't have a problem with it happening to a guy, no matter how justify it, your effectively part of the problem.

Hey, who knows, maybe we'll see a game with a BDSM relationship involved heavily involved in it's core, complete with graphic sex scenes, without the game being a straight out work of porn within our lifetimes. I could easily see things going that far, but as I said baby steps. Get it to the point where a typical "man takes the lead" relationship doesn't get attention, and people don't freak out every time something bad happens to an action-girl in a video game. Then maybe we'll start seeing more media where you have women being the truely aggressive ones (outside of porno games), and then from there perhaps into alternative lifestyles.

Such are my thoughts, I don't expect a lot of people to agree with me. I've said all this before, so I'm probably not to spend a lot of time argueing it here, since pretty much anything that can be said on the subject has already been said on these forums. I'm just including my point of view for the sake of completeness.

Somehow I think that the relliance of AAA publishers on one tiny, super narrow portion of what games can do has led to the exclusion of anything that doesn't resemble the armored, gruff badass dude. It was never so clear until I saw the poster advertising Crysis 3, Army of Two II and Deadspace 3 side by side. It's ridiculous how undistinguishable the art for the three games were. WIth marketing so freakishly afraid of touching anything that hasn't been proven to sell in the millions, it's no wonder the FPS male characters are sucking all the air in the industry for anything else. Other genres, some of them niche, are more diverse in their protagonists but they never get the limelight. For example, take the adventure game genre, briefly mentioned through Dreamfall in this video. There are tons of female leads there, usually pretty well characterized too. You could also mention the action/adventure games to mark the diversity. Lara Croft is the more prominent, but you could also put Jade, Chell, and even Faith in that category. Supergiant Games has a game coming out sort of in the vein of Bastion where the lead is a woman called Red. And let's not get started with RPGs, specially Japanese ones. My point is that the exclusion of females may not driven only by mysoginistic things, but by exclusion of diversity as a whole. Since the big developers have shut the door to anything resembling diversity in tone, mechanics, style or characters, women as leads, along with almost anything else, where left out in the cold.

On another note, it's sadder that there are people who defend males who can't empathize with anything that doesn't resemble them. That should be one of the virtues of gaming as medium, the ability to draw one in so much in through interaction as to generate empathy for the character, whoever they may be. I may take a lot of flack for the following, but if you can't find a way to step outside your ego enough to empathize with a female protaganist, because "eew, she's kissing a dude", then you probably have some issues to deal with in real life as well when it comes to social skills.

But I noticed a trend of these characters slowly losing their luster, their franchises losing steam, and the presence of women in the games industry going downward, reduced from leading roles to supporting roles.

"Aya Brea" in 3rd Birthday is a complete travesty and arguably the worst character assassination I've ever seen... alongside Samus's infamous and sorely remembered fall from the peak to the bottom of the barrel in Metroid: Other M, two games that took once highly respected, independent,powerful women and reduced them to whimpering, whining, incompetent bimbos. It is literally painful for me to remember those games and what they did to two of my childhood icons that inspired me as a young girl playing games.

But then you have games like Dino Crisis, whose serious was killed by DC3 (which had dinosaurs in space... and a male lead). Resident Evil hasn't had a female in the lead starring role since RE3 in 1999 (Revelations comes close), yet we've had 3 friggin' games with Chris "Punch Boulders" Redfield (I miss Claire and Rebecca so much).

Perfect Dark Zero was abysmal and killed off Lara Croft's biggest competitor, Heavenly Sword was decent but undersold, Bayonetta literally had Nintendo swoop in to publish the game when no one else would, Silent Hill decided to stick to badass men for their horror franchises for the past six installments, Beyond Good & Evil 2 is the great white buffalo of games at this point, Final Fantasy 13 is so badly written (and its female characters so unlikable) that I'm not sure it's even worth mentioning them...

I'm dying for more female characters in lead roles. Despite what some idiots claim, girl gamers don't just play Farmville and Bejeweled. I met my fiance playing Mortal Kombat and kicked his ass hard with Kitana. I play my Gears of Wars and Halos and God of Wars and Uncharteds and Bioshocks and Mass Effects.

But the industry can do much better. To hear that they're told outright "it has to be a male lead" irks me to no end. I am a woman gamer wishing to play as a woman hero, and I'm an underserved market drowning in a sea of bald space marines.

Nice to see this get brought up. I had similar issues with comments Epic made about the Gears franchise a while back: apparently it's alright to have women as supporting characters in a Gears game. You can even have them carving up the Locust hordes with trusty chainsaw just like the men. But the minute you suggest making a Gears game with a female lead instead of a male lead? AW HELL NAW! You get back in the support role where you belong, and make me a damn sammich!

It's weird. He goes from lambasting Cage for his terrible and hackish approach to story-telling to suddenly a good example. He didn't seem to stop and consider there might be a reason why other than sexual insecurity of a few defective individuals.

I think there is a reason for a lack of intimacy of player-characters OUTSIDE the RPG genre, specifically where the player controls the level and pace of intimacy. Because Sterling has distinctly left out the many RPGs with deep character choices, there is lots of intimate relationships up to and beyond kissing but it's all with the player's consent.

Precisely because the playable character is not the object of the story but the subject of the story. This is NOT objectification. That term "Sexual objectification" was coined for passive media like Movies and even print advertising where the observer takes a completely passive role and the dynamics of depiction.

When the character is subject, it's just as jarring for them to kiss someone the player wouldn't want to kiss as for the player character to kill who they wouldn't want to kill, in a cutscene for example.

That's not to say the publisher is right that the male gamer has a categorical insecurity as I describe. Remember, publishers are mostly morons who know next to nothing about being creative. But there is a reason we don't see this anywhere, even in independent games.

This is where quicktime events can be useful, like in Tomb Raider Anniversary Lara kills Larson in a cutscene but the player has to press a button to have Lara actually pull the trigger. If the player doesn't do this, Larson kills her. So it's a choice but a choice with an unbearable alternative.

And again with the ending of Metal Gear Solid 3, you have to actually press to button to fire... and kill your final opponent.

...I'm sure there are more, but those are the ones off the top of my head

Portal 2, beyond good and evil, heart of the swarm could be added to that list

OP: Seriously? This is a problem still? I could have sworn that gender issues were a thing of the past like polio and the circus. And point blank you can blame the publishers because of one simple fact: They have the last word when it comes there being a female protagonist, and if they're the ones telling devs that they cant have a chick be a hero, well then, you have your answer. Personally I'd love to see an intelligent female anti-hero, like Boltie from "Super", in a game. It'd definitely be a hell of a lot better than a bimbo or a stock gun toting marine/super soldier cause at least it'd be DIFFERENT!

Excellent video. I admit that early on I had a laundry list of unknowns that most people forget to think about, especially about that survey that stated that female-led games have very little marketing budgets compared to male ones without giving us any more information about specific data. And then, miraculously, Jim went on to actually list each one of those issues and unknowns. Bravo, Jim.

It's interesting that the game industry recognizes the importance of an avatar aligning closely with one's own self-identity but has failed to recognize that women gamers have surged to around half of the gaming industry's clientel (47% was the last legitimate study I saw). Perhaps they have more specific numbers on sex demographics by game genre (for example, if that 47% increase in gaming is only due to rise of iOS games then we may still have a significant sex disparity of their customer base. Or if there is a significant sex disparity between game genres).

As a rule, I generally expect companies to cater to their customers. If that's 80% Female and 80% Native American then gosh darn it I expect to see a Native American girl on the cover of their product. As is, with the information we have, it looks like they're simply ignoring the fact that there are girl gamers too and in almost equal proportions.

I do wonder if males respond differently to their female avatars engaging in romantic relationships with male characters than women do with male avatars engaging in romantic relationships with females. Is one sex more adverse to it than the other? Is the difference of adverseness enough to warrant a "you can't do that" response? I recall a study on the impact of minorities regularly playing with avatars that are white, for example. There is something to be said for an underlying impact of how that avatar is portrayed. I don't know if that merely comes down to homophobia (can it be called that if it's a woman on guy?) or if it's something that they find breaks immersion.

Hmm, what I wouldn't give for funding and a team of statisticians. So many questions and gracious few answers.

Yeah I totally agree that we both have it bad with representation. I'm just worried that straight women will get a bit forgotten about. It's slightly ridiculous that we are having this conversation at all. We should have good representation for everyone. I'm sure we can all agree that gay guys are the worst off :(.

I didn't really find anyone to be antagonistic in that thread. Which was nice.

I personally don't think straight women are ever going to be cast to the wayside. If feminism finally manages to make strides into gaming, and we see more female protagonists, the odds are they will be mostly straight, since most feminists (and most women) are straight.

But yeah, anyone who wants some guy on guy action is going to be left sorely wanting by the game industry. Alas.

I do wonder if males respond differently to their female avatars engaging in romantic relationships with male characters than women do with male avatars engaging in romantic relationships with females. Is one sex more adverse to it than the other? Is the difference of adverseness enough to warrant a "you can't do that" response? I recall a study on the impact of minorities regularly playing with avatars that are white, for example. There is something to be said for an underlying impact of how that avatar is portrayed. I don't know if that merely comes down to homophobia (can it be called that if it's a woman on guy?) or if it's something that they find breaks immersion. Hmm.

Well, there's the fact that women (and minorities) kinda have to get used to it.

Women get used to playing as male characters who get it on with women, while the opposite, not as much.

By pressing X (or whatever) and skipping character customization altogether.

I say again - all three are defaults.

Don't really see how that's a big deal.

Makes it more likely to be picked.

This. All the "but most people picked Maleshep!" arguments fall flat when you point at that A) Male Shep was in all the marketing and, y'know, people kind of like to play as the character that they saw in the trailer and on the posters and B) MaleShep is the default selection and you have to put effort in to play as a female or customised character.

Femshep wasn't included in the marketing until ME3 and even then they had a beauty contest (ugh) to redesign the default female character into someone more, uh, "aesthetically pleasing".

Femshep wasn't included in the marketing until ME3 and even then they had a beauty contest (ugh) to redesign the default female character into someone more, uh, "aesthetically pleasing".

No they didn't...

They had a competition to choose the default look for female Shepard. The only differences were hair/eye/skin colour. It's not like they asked people whether or not she should have larger breasts, smoother skin or anything.

That's hardly a beauty contest.

Not forgetting the reason for why they did it, which is a lot of people on the forums were unhappy with the lack of advertising Femshep was getting. The contest was Bioware's way of advertising Femshep and allowing the fans a level of decision making into how she'd look.

The-Bas:Yeah, more women in gaming please!Would be fun with some new in game mini-games. Like grocery shopping and tampon changing.

Well, we lasted 6 pages at least. I am sure that's a record of some kind.

I had no idea that kind of blatant exclusion was going on behind the scenes.

The female protagonist thing I just don't get. Every game I've played with a female protagonist has been fantastic. Hell, Mass Effect is BETTER with a female than with a male!

Though I do have to play the douchebag on one account........ I have felt a tiny, tiny bit uncomfortable watching my Commander Shepard get intimate with some of the characters.I'm one of the most accepting, do whatever you want, give rights to everyone, people in the world, but I can't deny it made me squirm just a bit. My reasoning isn't any kind of homophobia, it's just that in the end, I'm not attracted to men. I've experimented, I was open to it and it isn't me. Simple as that. The main character is, in many cases, the one we channel ourselves through and when they start doing things I don't want to do, it makes me feel the tiniest bit odd. Except with Garrus. I'd go gay for Garrus any day. But I'm talking about the others.

It's OBVIOUSLY nowhere near to being close to being almost to the point where I wouldn't play a game, but it's there. And if I feel a little bit, for a lot of the majority Male audience that's less open, it may be enough that they don't want to play. I don't see a solution other than widespread social change.

I don't care about sexism or the heterosexual stereotype, i simply don't care. Would i play a game that shows me it revolves guy on guy relationship, no. Would i play a game with an active female protagonist, maybe. But i don't NEED it i don't need to have more female protagonist that aren't pure "sexmeat" because publishers don't want it or because it's almost never done (well).I don't feel the need to get used to playing as a female protagonist and have relationship(s) with guys i just don't see how it improves my gaming experience. I desire a great game, if they chose to go with a male because females simply don't do as well, marketing or experience wise then I'm ok with that.